Archimedes  is supposed to have said once “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”.  Brave words.
Of course it’s not true in a practical sense (he’d need to be standing in space, for starters!), but we all know what he means – with the right tools, used in the right way can change the world.
So it is with presentations and I’d like to try an analogy on you, gentle reader, and see what you think.
Have the presentation in the wrong place and no amount of good idea (levers) is going to move even a grain of sand. Â Have your fulcrum in the right place – a great, effective presentation and, well, you may not move the earth as Archimedes suggested, but at least you’re in with a fighting chance of moving your part of it!
Why is this important? Â Simply because we need to work on both.
I’ve lost times of the number of people who’ve come to me knowing what they want to say but haven’t a clue how to go about it (just watch any episode of Dragons’ Den to see an example!): it’s not uncommon for people to come to me trying to write presentations before they’ve done the research, either. Â (Perhaps they’re so worried about the presentation they think the content will take care of itself?) Neither option works.
You’d not try using a fulcrum without a lever – or visa versa – would you? Â No. Â So why try writing a presentation without content? Â Or having content with no way of communicating it?
You’d not try a car without wheels? Â Or wheels without a car!
Or as a friend of mine once said “You’d not try a Coke without Jack Daniels, would you?”… but that’s a whoooollee different story! Â ;)
Well said Simon, the number of times I have had students come to me wanting me to help them with only one part of the equation, when I can tell almost before they start that they only have a the lever or only a fulcrum and not both.
If I take your analogy at face value some presenters have to live with the fact that their levers are just not big enough to change the world. Archimedes said so. And if ideas are the lever, well, some ideas are bigger than others.
Which actually might be a reasonable analogy still – if the content is superawesome then it might even have an impact in spite of a dreadful delivery. If it sucks, well you know that with the right amount of bling you can wow people into staring at you. I trust that some marketers know perfectly well how to sell, let’s say, less than helpful ideas.
Bring both together, the right idea and the matching presentation format and you can indeed change the world. So helping people leverage their ideas by telling them how to create their fulcrum is a great concept in my opinion ;-)
I like your analogy in terms of the “mechanical advantage” of presentations. A good presentation may take weeks to prepare, but just think of the huge amount of output that may result from that relatively small amount of input. I’ll have to remember to use that metaphor in the future.